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For the last ~7 years or so for me, the Internet has been specialty, curated online communities like Hacker News, Pinkbike, 68kMLA, /r/DestinyTheGame, and Audio

For the last ~7 years or so for me, the Internet has been specialty, curated online communities like Hacker News, Pinkbike, 68kMLA, /r/DestinyTheGame, and AudioScienceReview. It’s been absolutely great. It’s the real intersection of my real life & interests with a broader group of people than my local environment would otherwise enable. I don’t participate in much social media. Facebook’s entire purpose to me is classified ads for furniture and bike parts. Instagram exists purely as an augmentation to Pinterest. Both of which exist simply to keep me and my partner from arguing endlessly about entirely imaginary design & decorating details. I don’t get the appeal of TikTok, and Twitter is mostly a place to make #dadjokes that I don’t want to subject my actual family to. There was no positive value in being too online and participating in platforms and venues of the be all things to everybody variety.

3abiton 3y ago
But I feel that's the central argument of the article. There is no dominent culture or obvious trends, only groups and groups of intersections of interests.
- im_down_w_otp 3y ago
  I guess so, but that’s also how it’s always been. Not everyone was a hippie. Not everyone was a yuppie. Not everyone was grunge. Not everyone was Johnny Football. The prevailing zeitgeist narrative about any given era is all at once revisionist, simplistic, and projected onto it after the fact. One could assign some characteristic to the preset era like the dominance of influencers and gurus or something of that sort. It will be easy 15 years from now to look back at how everything from makeup to IT infrastructure culture became hitched to “influencers”.
rumblerock 3y ago
I made a similar change just this year. Dialed back my Reddit usage to a few select subs, quit Instagram, tuned my YouTube recommendations to focus more on my hobbies, and get my news / commentary from NYT + podcasts. I'm not missing out on anything by being out of the loop on the outrage of the day or meme of the week. I still kill time online but it's less mindless and aligns more with my interests. Looking back, the mind shift was gradual but quite profound. It feels like I've reclaimed control over what I deem important, and my opinions actually feel like my own rather than being swayed by algorithmic feeds and comments. The more time I spend detached from the internet hive mind, the more it looks like a zeitgeist of compounded absurdity.

3abiton 3y ago

But I feel that's the central argument of the article. There is no dominent culture or obvious trends, only groups and groups of intersections of interests.

im_down_w_otp 3y ago
I guess so, but that’s also how it’s always been. Not everyone was a hippie. Not everyone was a yuppie. Not everyone was grunge. Not everyone was Johnny Football. The prevailing zeitgeist narrative about any given era is all at once revisionist, simplistic, and projected onto it after the fact. One could assign some characteristic to the preset era like the dominance of influencers and gurus or something of that sort. It will be easy 15 years from now to look back at how everything from makeup to IT infrastructure culture became hitched to “influencers”.

rumblerock 3y ago

I made a similar change just this year. Dialed back my Reddit usage to a few select subs, quit Instagram, tuned my YouTube recommendations to focus more on my hobbies, and get my news / commentary from NYT + podcasts. I'm not missing out on anything by being out of the loop on the outrage of the day or meme of the week. I still kill time online but it's less mindless and aligns more with my interests. Looking back, the mind shift was gradual but quite profound. It feels like I've reclaimed control over what I deem important, and my opinions actually feel like my own rather than being swayed by algorithmic feeds and comments. The more time I spend detached from the internet hive mind, the more it looks like a zeitgeist of compounded absurdity.